ULIA  WARD  HOWE 
?D 


GIFT   OF 

TT  e^>-<- 


THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR 


JULIA   WARD    HOWE 

From  .1  J  >rawinjr  by  John  Klliott 


The  Eleventh  Hour 

in  the  Life  of 
Julia  Ward  Howe 


BY 

MAUD  HOWE 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 
1911 


Copyright,  1911, 
BY  LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY. 

All  rights  reserved 


Published,  October,  1911 


Printer* 
8.  J.  PABKHILL  &  Co.,  BOSTON,  U.  S.  A. 


PS  2018 

E^ 

MM 


AD  MATREM 

The  acorns  are  again  ripe  on  your  oaks,  the  leaves  of 
your  nut  tree  begin  to  turn  gold,  the  fruit  trees  you 
planted  a  lustre  since,  droop  with  their  weight  of  crim 
son  fruit,  the  little  grey  squirrels  leap  nimbly  from 
bough  to  bough  busily  preparing  for  winter's  siege. 
The  air  is  fragrant  with  the  perfume  of  wild  grape, 
joyous  with  the  voices  of  children  passing  to  the  white 
school  house  on  the  hill.  The  earth  laughs  with  the  joy 
of  the  harvest.  What  thank  offering  can  I  bring  for 
this  year  that  has  not  yet  taught  me  how  to  live  with 
out  you?  Only  this  sheaf  of  gleanings  from  your  fields! 

OAK  GLEN,  September,  1911. 


415445 


FOREWORD 

This  slight  and  hasty  account  of 
some  of  my  mother's  later  activities  was 
written  to  read  to  a  small  group  of 
friends  with  whom  I  wished  to  share  the 
lesson  of  the  Eleventh  Hour  of  a  life 
filled  to  the  end  with  the  joy  of  toil. 
More  than  one  of  my  hearers  asked  me 
to  print  what  I  had  read  them,  in  the 
belief  that  it  would  be  of  value  to  that 
larger  circle  of  her  friends,  the  public. 
Such  a  request  could  not  be  refused. 


THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR 

IN  THE  LIFE  OF 

JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

My  mother's  diary  for  1906,  her 
eighty-seventh  year,  opens  with  this 
entry: 

"  I  pray  for  many  things  this  year. 
For  myself,  I  ask  continued  health 
of  mind  and  body,  work,  useful,  hon 
orable  and  as  remunerative  as  it  shall 
please  God  to  send.  For  my  dear  fam 
ily,  work  of  the  same  description  with 
comfortable  wages,  faith  in  God,  and 
love  to  each  other.  For  my  country, 
that  she  may  keep  her  high  promise 
to  mankind,  for  Christendom,  that 
it  may  become  more  Christlike,  for 
l 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

the  struggling  nationalities,  that  they 
may  attain  to  justice  and  peace." 

Not  vain  the  prayer!  Health  of 
mind  and  body  was  granted,  work, 
useful,  honorable,  if  not  very  remuner 
ative,  was  hers  that  year  and  nearly 
five  years  more,  for  she  lived  to  be 
ninety-one  and  a  half  years  old.  When 
Death  came  and  took  her,  he  found 
her  still  at  work.  Hers  the  fate  of 
the  happy  warrior  who  falls  in  thick 
of  battle,  his  harness  on  his  back. 

How  did  she  do  it? 

Hardly  a  day  passes  that  I  am 
not  asked  the  question! 

Shortly  before  her  death,  she  spoke 
of  the  time  when  she  would  no  longer 
be  with  us  —  an  almost  unheard-of 
thing  for  her  to  do.  We  turned  the 
subject,  begged  her  not  to  dwell  on  it. 
2 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

"Yes!"  she  laughed  with  the  old 
flash  that  has  kindled  a  thousand 
audiences,  "  it's  not  my  business  to 
think  about  dying,  it's  my  business  to 
think  about  living!  " 

This  thinking  about  living,  this  tre 
mendous  vitality  had  much  to  do 
with  her  long  service,  for  the  impor 
tant  thing  of  course  was  not  that  she 
lived  ninety-one  years,  but  that  she 
worked  for  more  than  ninety-one 
years,  never  became  a  cumberer  of 
the  earth,  paid  her  scot  till  the  last. 
She  never  knew  the  pathos  of  doing 
old-age  work,  such  as  is  provided  in 
every  class  for  those  inveterate  work 
ers  to  whom  labor  is  as  necessary  as 
bread  or  breath.  The  old  ploughman 
sits  by  the  wayside  breaking  stones 
to  mend  the  road  others  shall  travel 
3 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

over;  the  old  prima  donna  listens  to 
her  pupils'  triumphs;  the  old  states 
man  gives  after-dinner  speeches,  or 
makes  himself  a  nuisance  by  speaking 
or  writing,  ex  cathedra,  on  any  ques 
tion  that  needs  airing,  whether  it  is 
his  subject  or  not;  she  did  good,  vig 
orous  work  till  the  end,  in  her  own 
chosen  callings  of  poet  and  orator. 
What  she  produced  in  her  last  year 
was  as  good  in  quality  as  any  other 
year's  output.  The  artist  in  her  never 
stopped  growing;  indeed,  her  latest 
work  has  a  lucidity,  a  robust  simplic 
ity,  that  some  of  the  earlier  writings 
lack. 

In   the   summer   of    1909    she   was 

asked  to  write  a  poem  on  Fulton  for 

the  Fulton-Hudson  celebration.     Ever 

better  than   her  word,  she  not   only 

4 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

wrote  the  poem,  but  recited  it  in  the 
New  York  Metropolitan  Opera  House 
on  the  evening  of  September  9th. 
Those  who  saw  her,  the  only  woman 
amid  that  great  gathering  of  repre 
sentative  men  from  all  over  the  world, 
will  not  forget  the  breathless  silence 
of  that  vast  audience  as  she  came 
forward,  leaning  on  her  son's  arm, 
and  read  the  opening  lines: 

A  river  flashing  like  a  gem, 
Crowned  with  a  mountain  diadem,  — 

or  the  thunders  of  applause  that  fol 
lowed  the  last  lines: 

While  pledge  of  Love's  assured  control, 
The  Flag  of  Freedom  crowns  the  pole. 

The  poem  had  given  her  a  good  deal 
of  trouble,  the  last  couplet  in  especial. 
The     morning     of     the    celebration, 
5 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

when  I  went  into  Mrs.  Seth  Low's 
spare  bedroom  to  wake  her,  she  cried 
out: 

"  I  have  got  my  last  verse!  " 

She  was  much  distressed  that  the 
poem  appeared  in  Collier's  without 
the  amended  closing  lines.  The  fault 
was  mine;  I  had  arranged  with  the 
editor  Mr.  Hapgood  for  its  publication. 
She  had  done  so  much  "  free  gratis  " 
work  all  her  life  that  it  seemed  fitting 
this  poem  should  at  least  earn  her, 
her  travelling  expenses. 

"  Let  this  be  a  lesson/7  she  said, 
"  never  print  a  poem  or  a  speech  till 
it  has  been  delivered;  always  give 
the  eleventh  hour  its  chance!  " 

It  may  be  interesting  here  to  recall 
that  the  Atlantic  Monthly  paid  her 
five  dollars  for  the  Battle  Hymn  of 
6 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

the  Republic,  the  only  money  she 
ever  received  for  it. 

Her  power  of  keeping  abreast  of  the 
times  is  felt  in  the  Fulton  poem,  where 
she  rounds  out  her  eulogy  of  Fulton's 
invention  of  the  steamboat  with  a 
tribute  to  Peary.  Only  a  few  days 
before  the  news  of  our  latest  arctic 
triumph  had  flashed  round  the  world, 
her  world,  whose  business  was  her 
business  as  long  as  she  lived  in  it;  so 
into  the  fabric  of  the  poem  in  honor  of 
Fulton,  she  weaves  an  allusion  to  this 
new  victory. 

On  her  ninety-first  birthday  a  re 
porter  from  a  Boston  paper  asked  her 
for  a  motto  for  the  women  of  America. 
She  was  sitting  on  the  little  balcony 
outside  her  town  house,  reading  her 
Greek  Testament,  when  the  young  man 
7 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

was  announced.  She  closed  her  book, 
thought  for  a  moment,  then  gave  the 
motto  that  so  well  expressed  herself: 

"Up  to  date!" 

Was  there  ever  anything  more  char 
acteristic? 

In  December,  1909,  the  last  Decem 
ber  she  was  to  see,  she  wrote  a  poem 
caUed  "  The  Capitol,"  for  the  first 
meeting  of  the  American  Academy 
of  Arts  and  Letters  at  Washington. 
The  poem,  published  in  the  Century 
Magazine  for  March,  1910,  is  as  good 
as  any  she  ever  wrote,  with  one  excep 
tion —  the  Battle  Hymn;  and  that, 
as  she  has  told  us,  "  wrote  itself." 
She  had  arranged  to  go  to  Washing 
ton  to  read  her  poem  before  the  As 
sociation.  Though  we  feared  the  win 
ter  journey  for  her,  she  was  so  bent 
8 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

on  going  that  I  very  reluctantly  agreed 
to  accompany  her.  A  telegram,  signed 
by  William  Dean  Howells,  Robert  Un 
derwood  Johnson,  and  Thomas  Nelson 
Page,  all  officers  of  the  Association,  urg 
ing  her  not  to  take  the  risk  of  so  long  a 
journey  in  winter,  induced  her  to  give 
up  the  trip.  She  was  rather  nettled  by 
the  kindly  hint  and  flashed  out: 

"Hah!  they  think  that  I  am  too 
old,  but  there's  a  little  ginger  left  in 
the  old  blue  jar!  " 

She  never  thought  of  herself  as  old, 
therefore  she  never  was  really  old  in 
the  essentials.  Her  iron  will,  her  in 
domitable  spirit,  held  her  frail  body 
to  its  duty  till  the  very  end. 

"  Life  is  like  a  cup  of  tea,  the  sugar 
is  all  at  the  bottom!  "  she  cried  one 
day.  This  was  the  very  truth;  she 
9 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

knew  no  "  winter  of  discontent."  Her 
autumn  was  all  Indian  summer,  glori 
ous  with  crimson  leaves,  purple  and 
gold  sunsets. 

In  April,  1910,  she  wrote  the  third 
and  last  of  her  poems  to  her  beloved 
friend  and  "  Minister  "  James  Free 
man  Clarke.  She  read  this  poem 
twice,  at  the  centenary  celebration 
of  Mr.  Clarke's  birth  held  at  the 
Church  of  the  Disciples,  April  3rd, 
and  the  day  after  at  the  Arlington 
St.  Church.  Compared  with  the  verses 
written  for  Mr.  Clarke's  fiftieth  birth 
day  and  with  those  celebrating  his 
seventieth  birthday,  this  latest  poem 
is  to  me  the  best.  The  opening  lines 
bite  right  into  the  heart  of  the  matter; 
as  she  read  them  standing  in  the  pul 
pit  a  thrill  passed  through  the  congre- 
10 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

gation  of  her  fellow  disciples  gathered 
together  in  memory  of  their  founder. 

Richer  gift  can  no  man  give 
Than  he  doth  from  God  receive. 
We  in  greatness  would  have  pleasure, 
But  we  must  accept  our  measure. 
Let  us  question,  then,  the  grave, 
Querying  what  the  Master  gave, 
Whom,  in  his  immortal  state, 
Grateful  love  would  celebrate. 

Only  human  life  was  his, 
With  its  thin-worn  mysteries. 

Lifting  from  the  Past  its  veil, 
What  of  his  does  now  avail? 
Just  a  mirror  in  his  breast 
That  revealed  a  heavenly  guest, 
And  the  love  that  made  us  free 
Of  the  same  high  company. 

The    poem    on    Abraham    Lincoln 

written   for    the    Lincoln    Centenary 

and  read  by  her  at  the  meeting  in 

Symphony    Hall,    Boston,    February 

11 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

12th,  1909,  is  perhaps  the  best  of  the 
innumerable  memorial  poems  she  com 
posed.  As  one  by  one  the  centena 
ries  of  this  and  that  member  of  the 
band  of  great  men  and  women  who 
made  our  country  illustrious  in  the 
19th  Century  were  celebrated,  it  came 
to  be  considered  as  a  matter  of  course 
that  she,  almost  the  last  survivor  of 
that  noble  company,  should  write  a 
poem  for  the  occasion.  So  difficult  a 
critic  as  Professor  Barrett  Wendell 
said  to  me  that  he  considered  some  of 
the  stanzas  of  the  Lincoln  poem  as 
good  as  the  Battle  Hymn.  I  remember 
he  particularly  liked  the  last  two  verses, 

A  treacherous  shot,  a  sob  of  rest, 
A  martyr's  palm  upon  his  breast, 
A  welcome  from  the  glorious  seat 
Where  blameless  souls  of  heroes  meet; 
12 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

And,  thrilling  through  unmeasured  days, 
A  song  of  gratitude  and  praise; 
A  cry  that  all  the  earth  shall  heed, 
To  God,  who  gave  him  for  our  need. 

During  her  last  summer  she  was  in 
correspondence  with  her  friend  Mr. 
Garrison  about  the  publication  of  a 
volume  that  should  gather  up  into  one 
sheaf  these  scattered  occasional  poems. 
She  had  this  much  on  her  mind  and 
made  every  endeavor  to  collect  the 
poems  together:  some  of  them  had 
never  been  printed,  and  of  others  she 
possessed  no  copy.  She  stopped  in 
Boston  on  her  way  to  Smith  College 
in  the  last  days  of  last  September,  and 
spent  an  afternoon  in  her  Beacon  St. 
house  looking  for  some  of  those  lost 
poems.  Her  wish  was  fulfilled,  and 
the  posthumous  volume,  to  which  we 
13 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

gave  the  title  "  At  Sunset/'  lies  be 
side  me.  Look  down  the  page  of  con 
tents  and  note  how  various  are  the 
names  that  figure  in  the  list  of  per 
sonal  poems,  and  what  a  wide  range  of 
character  they  show;  beginning  with 
Lincoln,  Doctor  Holmes,  Washington 
Allston,  Robert  E.  Lee,  Whittier,  Lucy 
Stone,  Phillips  Brooks,  Robert  Brown 
ing,  Archbishop  Williams,  and  ending 
with  Michael  Anagnos  —  this  is  a  wide 
swath  to  cut,  wide  as  her  own  sym 
pathy. 

One  poem  of  hers  that  has  soothed 
many  a  wounded  heart  should  be  bet 
ter  known  than  I  believe  it  to  be. 
Though  it  has  no  dedication,  it 
might  well  be  dedicated  to  the  men 
and  women  who  have  tried,  and  who 
to  the  world  seem  to Jiave  tried  in  vain. 
14 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

ENDEAVOR 

"  What  hast  thou  for  thy  scattered  seed, 

O  Sower  of  the  plain? 
Where  are  the  many  gathered  sheaves 

Thy  hope  should  bring  again?  " 
"  The  only  record  of  my  work 

Lies  in  the  buried  grain." 

"  0  Conqueror  of  a  thousand  fields! 

In  dinted  armor  dight, 
What  growths  of  purple  amaranth 

Shall  crown  thy  brow  of  might?  " 
"  Only  the  blossom  of  my  life 

Flung  widety  in  the  fight." 

"  What  is  the  harvest  of  thy  saints, 

O  God!  who  dost  abide? 
Where  grow  the  garlands  of  thy  chiefs 

In  blood  and  sorrow  dyed? 
What  have  thy  servants  for  their  pains?  " 

"  This  only,  —  to  have  tried." 

On  the  26th  of  July,  1908,  she  wrote: 

"  The   thought   came   to   me   that   if 

God  only  looked  upon  me,  I  should 

become   radiant   like   a   star."      This 

15 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

thought  is  embodied  in  the  following 
quatrain. 

Wouldst  thou  on  me  but  turn  thy  wondrous 

sight, 

My  breast  would  be  so  flooded  by  thy  light, 
The  light  whose  language  is  immortal  song, 
That  I  to  all  the  ages  should  belong. 

Two  lines  of  hers  have  always 
seemed  to  me  to  express  above  all 
others  her  life's  philosophy: 

In  the  house  of  labor  best 
Can  I  build  the  house  of  rest ! 

Of  all  her  labors,  heavy  and  varied 
as  those  of  Hercules,  her  poetry  was 
what  she  loved  best.  But  she  lived 
in  an  age  when  there  are  few  who 
can  take  their  spiritual  meat  in  verse. 
The  age  of  steel  is  an  age  of  prose, 
and  so  she  labored  in  season  and  out 
to  give  her  message  in  prose  as  well 
as  in  poetry,  with  the  spoken  word  as 
16 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

well  as  the  written.  She  was  the  most 
willing  of  troubadours;  she  hastened 
gladly  wherever  she  was  called,  whether 
it  was  to  some  stately  banquet  of  the 
muses  like  the  Bryant  Centenary,  or 
to  a  humble  company  of  illiterate 
negroes,  in  the  poor  little  chapel  at 
Santo  Domingo,  where  she  preached 
all  one  season.  Whether  some  rich 
and  powerful  association  like  the 
Woman's  Club  at  Chicago  summoned 
her  or  some  modest  group  of  working 
women  on  Cape  Cod,  she  was  always 
ready.  She  asked  no  fee,  but  accepted 
what  was  given  her.  She  spoke  and 
wrote  oftenest  for  love,  and  next  often 
for  an  honorarium  of  five  dollars.  The 
first  need  of  her  being  was  to  give.  So 
much  had  been  given  to  her  that  she 
was  forever  trying  to  pay 'the  debt  by 
17 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

giving  of  her  store  to  others.  I  find  in 
her  own  handwriting  the  best  expres 
sion  of  this  need  of  giving,  that  was  per 
haps  the  prime  necessity  of  her  life. 

"  I,  for  one,  feel  that  my  indebted 
ness  grows  with  my  years.  And  it 
occurred  to  me  the  other  day  that  when 
I  should  depart  from  this  earthly 
scene,  "  God's  poor  Debtor  "  might  be 
the  fittest  inscription  for  my  grave 
stone,  if  I  should  have  one.  So  much 
have  I  received  from  the  great  Giver, 
so  little  have  I  been  able  to  return/' 

One  day  a  rash  scatter-brained  fel 
low  who  was  always  getting  himself 
and  others  into  hot  water  asked  her 
this  question: 

"Is  it  not  always  our  duty  to  sac 
rifice  ourselves  for  others?  ' 

She  knew  very  well  that  he  was  con- 
18 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

templating  a  perfectly  reckless  step 
and  was  trying  to  hoodwink  her  - 
and  himself  -  -  into  thinking  the  action 
noble,  because  it  would  be  so  disad 
vantageous  to  himself.  The  boy  I 
fear  forgot  her  answer;  here  it  is  for 
you  to  remember  and  lay  to  heart. 

"  We  must  always  remember  that 
we  come  into  the  world  alone,  that  we 
go  out  of  the  world  alone,  that  there 
is  nothing  to  us  but  ourselves." 

Certain  things,  she  held,  we  must 
sacrifice,  selfish  personal  ends,  com 
fort,  pleasure,  ease,  but  if  we  are  to 
fight  the  good  fight  we  must  not  make 
the  fancied  sacrifice  of  letting  our 
arms  rust  while  we  lay  them  down  to 
fight  another's  battle  —  nine  times  out 
of  ten  an  easier  thing  to  do  than  to 
fight  our  own.  She  had  met  with  so 
19 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

much  opposition  all  her  life  through 
serving  the  unpopular  causes  of  Aboli 
tion,  Woman's  Suffrage,  Religious  Free 
dom,  she  had  fought  so  grimly  for 
what,  when  she  entered  the  ranks, 
always  seemed  a  Forlorn  Hope,  that 
she  knew  the  real  joy  lies  in  the  battle, 
not  in  the  victory. 

Her  last  public  appearance  in  Boston 
was  at  a  hearing  in  the  State  House, 
where  she  came  to  plead  for  the  cause 
of  pure  milk.  This  was  on  the  23rd 
of  May,  1910,  four  days  before  her 
ninety-first  birthday.  There  had  been 
a  great  deal  about  the  Pure  Milk 
Crusade  in  the  newspapers,  the  Bos 
ton  Journal  had  made  a  special  ques 
tion  of  it  and  one  of  the  reporters  had 
already  interviewed  her  on  the  subject. 
The  Chairman  of  the  Massachusetts 
20 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

Milk  Consumer's  Association  had 
asked  her  to  give  her  name  as  honorary 
president  of  the  league.  This  she  was 
glad  to  do,  but  this  was  not  enough, 
she  wanted  to  do  more.  I  was  called 
up  once  or  twice  on  the  'phone  and 
asked  if  I  thought  Mrs.  Howe  was 
able  to  speak  before  the  legislative 
committee  at  one  of  the  hearings.  I 
thought  that  with  the  birthday  fes 
tivities  so  near  and  the  fatigue  of 
moving  down  to  Newport  before  her, 
this  would  be  a  little  too  much,  and 
consequently  "  begged  off.77  In  these 
days  there  was  a  meeting  in  Cam 
bridge  in  memory  of  Margaret  Fuller. 
She  was  invited  to  be  present,  and 
was  determined  to  go. 

"  They  have  not  asked  me  to  speak/' 
she  said  more  than  once. 
21 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

"  Of  course  they  will  ask  you  when 
they  see  you/'  I  assured  her. 

"  I  have  my  poem  on  Margaret 
written  for  her  Centenary ,"  she  said. 

"  Take  it  with  you/7 1  advised.  "  Of 
course  you  will  be  asked  to  say  some 
thing,  and  then  you  will  have  your 
poem  in  your  pocket  and  be  all  pre 
pared." 

I  was  unable  to  go  with  her  to  the 
meeting,  a  young  lady  who  came  to 
read  aloud  to  her  going  in  my  place. 
They  came  back  late  in  the  afternoon; 
the  meeting  had  been  long  and  I  saw 
immediately  that  she  was  very  tired. 
The  cause  of  this  soon  appeared. 

"  They  did  not  ask  me  to  speak/7 
she  said,  "  and  I  was  the  only  person 
present    who    had    known    Margaret 
and  remembered  her." 
22 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

I  was  deeply  troubled  about  this. 
I  saw  that  she  had  been  hurt,  and  I 
knew  that  if  I  had  gone  to  the  meeting 
I  could  have  managed  to  let  it  be 
known  that  she  had  brought  her  poem 
to  read.  For  a  very  little  time  she  was 
a  good  deal  depressed  by  the  incident 
-  felt  she  was  out  of  the  race,  no  longer 
entered  on  the  card  for  the  running. 

Very  soon  after  this  they  telephoned 
me  that  there  would  be  another  hear 
ing  on  the  milk  question  at  half  past 
ten,  and  that  it  would  probably  go 
on  all  the  morning.  She  had  been 
very  bright  when  she  came  down  to 
breakfast  and  made  a  capital  meal. 
When  I  went  into  her  room,  I  found 
her  at  her  desk  all  ready  for  the  day's 
campaign,  though  I  knew  that  the 
Margaret  Fuller  incident  still  rankled. 
23 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

"  There's  to  be  a  hearing  at  the 
State  House  on  the  milk  question; 
they  want  you  dreadfully  to  speak." 

She  was  all  alert  and  full  of  interest 
in  a  moment. 

"  What  do  you  say,  shall  we  go?  " 

"  Give  me  half  an  hour!  " 

I  left  her  for  that  half  hour.  When 
I  returned  she  had  sketched  out  her 
speech  and  dressed  herself  in  her  best 
flowered  silk  cloak  and  her  new  lilac 
satin  and  lace  hood  —  a  birthday  gift 
from  a  poor  seamstress.  We  drove 
to  the  State  House  together,  and  after 
some  difficulty  in  finding  the  right 
lift  finally  reached  the  room  where 
the  hearing  was  going  on.  She  had 
made  these  notes  for  her  speech,  but 
had  not  brought  them  with  her;  we 
found  them  afterward  in  her  desk. 
24 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  the  theme  of 
this  hearing  is  one  which  should  com 
mend  itself  to  all  good  citizens.  I 
think  that  even  our  patient  American 
public  is  tired  of  the  delay,  for  al 
though  we  are  in  many  ways  a  happy 
people,  I  do  think  that  our  public  is  a 
long  suffering  one.  I  should  think  that 
we  might  hope  for  a  speedy  settle 
ment.  For  we  are  not  discussing  points 
of  taste  and  pleasure,  but  matters  of 
life  and  death.  There  are  various 
parties  concerned  in  the  desired  set 
tlement,  but  to  my  mind  the  party 
most  nearly  concerned  is  the  infant 
who  comes  into  this  world  relying  upon 
a  promise  which  we  are  bound  to  fulfil, 
the  promise  that  he  shall  at  least  en 
joy  the  conditions  of  life.  I  learn  from 
men  of  science  that  no  possible  sub- 
25 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

stitute  exists  for  good  milk  in  the 
rearing  of  infants.  How  can  we  then 
delay  the  action  which  shall  secure 
it?" 

She  listened  to  the  long  speeches 
with  interest,  little  realizing  that  this 
was  to  be  her  last  public  appearance 
in  Boston.  When  the  time  came  for 
her  to  speak,  it  was  noticed  that  while 
all  the  others  took  the  oath  upon  the 
Bible  to  speak  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  the 
ceremony  was  omitted  with  her.  As 
her  name  was  called  she  rose  and 
stepped  forward  leaning  on  my  arm. 

"  You  may  remain  seated,  Mrs. 
Howe,"  said  the  Chairman. 

"  I  prefer  to  stand,"  was  the  an 
swer.  So,  standing  in  the  place  where, 
year  after  year,  she  had  stood  to  ask 
26 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

for  the  full  rights  of  citizenship,  for 
the  right  to  vote,  she  made  her  last 
thrilling  appeal  for  justice.  Her  keen 
wit,  her  power  of  hitting  the  nail  on 
the  head,  were  never  used  to  better 
purpose.  The  hearing  had  been  long 
and  tedious.  There  had  been  many 
speeches,  the  farmers  who  produce  the 
milk,  the  dealers  who  sell  it,  worthy 
citizens  who  were  trying  to  improve 
the  quality  of  the  milk  supply,  ex 
perts  whose  testimony  showed  the  far 
from  ideal  conditions  under  which  the 
milk  of  the  great  city  is  brought  to 
its  consumers.  Everything  had  been 
proper,  commonplace,  prosaic,  deadly 
dull.  Her  speech  was  short  and  to 
the  point,  giving  in  a  few  words  the 
whole  crux  of  the  matter.  Her  pres 
ence,  the  presence  of  the  old  Sybil, 
27, 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

mother,  grandmother,  great-grand 
mother  was  extraordinarily  romantic, 
it  lifted  the  whole  occasion  out  of  the 
realm  of  the  commonplace  into  that  of 
the  poetic.  Her  speech  followed  in 
substance  the  notes  she  had  prepared, 
but  it  was  enhanced  with  touches  of 
eloquence  such  as  this: 

"  We  have  heard  a  great  deal  about 
the  farmers'  and  the  dealers'  side  of 
this  case.  We  want  the  matter  settled 
on  the  ground  of  justice  and  mercy; 
it  ought  not  to  take  long  to  settle  what 
is  just  to  all  parties:  justice  to  all! 
Let  us  stand  on  that.  There  is  one 
deeply  interested  party  however,  of 
whom  we  have  heard  nothing.  He 
cannot  speak  for  himself,  I  am  here 
to  speak  for  him,  the  infant!  " 

The  impression  made  was  over- 
28 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

whelming.  This  ancient  Norn,  grave 
and  beautiful  as  the  elder  Fate,  claim 
ing  Justice  for  the  infant  in  the  cradle! 
The  effect  upon  the  audience  was  elec 
trical.  The  roughest  "  hayseed  "  in 
the  chamber  "  sat  up;  "  the  meanest 
dealer  was  moved,  the  sleepiest  legis 
lator  awoke.  The  silence  in  that  place 
of  creaking  chairs,  and  coughing  citi 
zens,  was  amazing.  All  listened  as 
to  a  prophetess  as,  step  by  step,  she 
unfolded  the  case  of  the  infant  as 
against  farmer  and  dealer.  When  Mr. 
Arthur  Dehon  Hill,  the  Counsel  for 
the  Association,  led  her  from  the  room 
he  said: 

"  Mrs.  Howe,  you  have  scored  our 
first  point." 

The  friend,  who  had  called  in  her 
help,  was  one  of  the  strongest  "  Anti- 
29 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

Suffragists."  This  was  a  very  char 
acteristic  happening.  Whenever  any 
great  question  of  public  interest,  not 
connected  with  Woman  Suffrage,  came 
up,  the  "  antis  "  were  continually  com 
ing  to  ask  her  help.  If  the  cause  was  a 
good  one  she  always  gave  it.  She  was 
no  respecter  of  persons;  the  cause 
was  the  thing.  Over  and  over  again 
she  was  appealed  to  by  those  who  were 
moving  heaven  and  earth  to  oppose 
her  in  Suffrage,  to  help  some  of  their 
lesser  ends.  She  was  always  ready; 
always  hitched  her  rope  to  their  mired 
wagon  and  helped  pull  with  a  will. 
Her  wagon  was  hitched  to  a  star,  the 
force  celestial  in  her  tow  rope  was  at 
the  service  of  all  who  asked  for  it  in  a 
good  cause. 

A  few  days  after  the  State-house 
30 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

hearing,  she  fell  in  her  own  room  and 
broke  a  rib.  She  recovered  from  the 
effects  of  this  and  in  the  last  days  of 
June  moved  down  to  her  place  at 
Portsmouth,  Rhode  Island,  where  she 
passed  nearly  four  happy  months  with 
children,  grandchildren  and  great 
grandchildren  about  her.  Three  weeks 
before  her  death  she  wrote  to  the 
Reverend  Ada  Bowles: 

"  I  have  it  in  mind  to  write  some 
open  letters  about  Religion  and  to 
publish  them  in  the  Woman's  Jour 
nal." 

She  was  at  work  upon  the  first  of 
these,  a  definition  of  true  Religion, 
when  the  end  came.  Her  last  Tuesday 
on  earth,  she  presided  at  the  Pape- 
terie,  a  social  club  of  Newport  ladies, 
in  whose  meetings  she  delighted.  She 
31 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

was  in  splendid  vein;  that  gay  com 
pany  of  clever  women  gathered  around 
her  as  pretty  butterflies  hover  about  a 
queen  rose,  still  fascinated,  still  en 
tranced  by  this  belle  of  ninety  years. 
She  wore  over  her  pretty  white  dress 
the  hood  she  had  received  from  Brown 
University,  the  year  before,  when  she 
was  given  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Lit 
erature.  She  was  as  usual  the  central 
figure  at  the  meeting,  and  gave  the 
Club  a  vivid  account  of  her  visit  to 
Smith  College,  whither  she  had  gone 
the  week  before  to  receive  another  de 
gree.  The  next  morning  she  worked 
at  her  "  Definition  of  True  Religion;  " 
five  days  later,  the  summons  came. 
Leaving  the  task  unfinished,  as  she 
would  have  said,  "  the  iron  to  cool 
upon  the  anvil,"  she  passed  on  to  the 
32 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

larger  task  that  now  absorbs  her  ardent 
spirit. 

During  her  last  years  she  received 
many  letters,  even  printed  documents, 
with  minute  inquiries  touching  her 
method  of  life.  A  society  of  Nono- 
genarians  sent  a  set  of  questions  about 
her  habits  of  body,  and  mind,  with  a 
postscript  asking  especially  to  what  she 
attributed  her  unusually  prolonged  ac 
tivity.  Though  I  am  sure  she  must 
have  answered,  for  she  was  faithful 
beyond  belief  in  such  matters,  we 
have  found  no  record  of  her  answer. 
Now  she  has  left  us,  her  children  are 
often  asked  the  same  sort  of  question 
about  her: 

"  How  did  she  do  it?  " 

"  What  was  her  secret?  " 

"  Why  did  she  die  ninety-one  years 
33 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

young,  instead  of  ninety-one  years 
old?  " 

If  she  herself  had  tried  to  tell  you 
her  secret,  to  account  for  her  rare 
powers  preserved  so  late  in  life,  spent 
so  prodigally  at  an  age  when  the  lean 
and  slippered  pantaloon  hoards  his 
scant  store  of  strength  as  a  miser 
hoards  his  gold,  she  would  have  said 
something  like  this: 

"  You  must  remember  I  had  a  splen 
did  Irish  wet-nurse!  " 

Perhaps  she  laid  too  much  stress  on 
that  excellent  woman's  share  in  making 
her  all  she  was  (no  foster-mother  was 
ever  more  faithfully  remembered  by 
nursling) ;  she  owed  something,  surely, 
to  her  forebears.  She  came  of  good  old 
fighting  stock;  in  her  veins  thrilled  the 
blood  of  Francis  Marion,  the  Swamp 
34 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

Fox  of  Virginia,  of  General  Greene, 
both  heroes  of  the  Revolution,  of  that 
staunch  old  rebel,  Roger  Williams,  of 
the  Wards,  for  two  generations  colo 
nial  Governors  of  Rhode  Island.  All 
this  fighting  blood,  together  with  her 
red  hair,  gave  a  certain  militant  touch 
to  her  character;  she  was  a  good  fighter 
for  every  just  cause,  especially  the 
cause  of  Peace.  Though  she  spoke 
oftener  of  the  Irish  wet-nurse  than 
of  her  ancestors,  she  did  not  altogether 
forget  them  as  an  anecdote  told  by  my 
sister,  Mrs.  Richards,  proves.  They 
were  at  some  meeting,  a  religious 
gathering  I  think,  where  one  speaker 
-rather  an  effete  pessimist  —  closed 
a  speech  in  the  key  of  the  "  Everlast 
ing  No,"  with  the  doleful  words: 
'  I  feel  myself  weighed  down  by 
35 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

a  sense  of  the  sins  of  my  ances 
tors." 

My  mother,  who  was  the  next 
speaker,  sprang  to  her  feet  with  the 
retort : 

"  And  I  feel  myself  lifted  up  on  the 
virtues  of  mine!  " 

There  rang  out  the  key-note  of  her 
life,  the  "  Everlasting  Yea,"  the  trum 
pet-tone  to  which  all  high  souls  rally. 

Many  people  have  had  fine  wet- 
nurses;  a  legion  have  the  same  legacy 
of  power  in  their  blood,  who  do  not 
accomplish  much  with  it. 

Poeta  nascitur,  non  fit!  She  was  of 
course  born  an  uncommon  person, 
but  I  believe  the  manner  and  habits 
of  her  life,  quite  as  much  as  her  native 
power,  made  for  her  vigorous  old  age. 
As  I  look  back  on  the  intimate  compan- 
36 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

ionship  of  a  lifetime,  I  realize  that 
these  excellent  life  habits,  habits  that 
any  one  of  us  can  cultivate,  had  even 
more  to  do  with  her  long  continued  use 
fulness  than  the  great  Irish  wet-nurse 
herself. 

First,  and  last,  and  all  the  time,  she 
worked,  and  worked,  and  worked, 
steadily  as  nature  works,  without  rest, 
without  haste.  She  was  never  idle, 
she  was  never  in  a  hurry.  Though  she 
played  too,  earnestly,  enthusiastically, 
it  was  never  idle  play;  there  was  al 
ways  a  dash  of  poetry  in  her  pastime, 
whether  it  was  making  a  charade  for 
the  Brain  Club,  or  composing  a  nursery 
rhyme  for  her  grandchildren.  The 
capacity  for  work  like  everything  else 
grows  by  cultivation.  She  started 
life  with  a  rarely  active  mind  and  tem- 
37 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

perament.  So  do  many  people.  It 
was  the  habit  of  study,  of  concentra 
tion,  of  work,  carefully  cultivated  from 
the  first,  held  on  to  in  spite  of  difficul 
ties —  she  had  plenty  of  them --that 
wrought  what  seemed  to  some  of  her 
contemporaries  a  miracle.  She  could 
say  like  Adam  in  Shakespeare's  play 
"As  You  Like  It:" 

"  My  age  is  as  a  lusty  winter; 

Frosty,  but  kindly:  let  me  go  with  you; 
I'll  do  the  service  of  a  younger  man 
In  all  your  business  and  necessities." 

"  Let  me  go  with  you!  "  This  is 
what  Age  is  forever  saying  to  Youth. 
"  Do  not  leave  me  behind  —  I  can 
still  serve!  "  So  long  as  Age  makes 
good  the  claim,  heydey,  headlong, 
good-natured  Youth  lets  the  veteran 
march  in  its  glorious  ranks.  Youth 
38 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

does  not  crowd  him  out,  as  the  veteran 
too  often  thinks,  he  drops  out  because 
he  "  cannot  keep  the  pace! "  The 
reason  she  did  not  drop  out  was  because 
she  made  good  her  claim.  The  children 
and  grandchildren  of  those  with  whom 
she  first  enlisted,  were  content  to  have 
her  march  with  them,  still  in  the 
van. 

Her  training,  from  her  very  start  in 
life,  made  her  a  cosmopolitan;  one  of 
the  factors  of  this  world  citizenship 
was  her  very  early  study  of  foreign 
languages.  French,  Italian  and  Latin 
she  knew  almost  from  the  time  she 
could  speak,  so  that  she  gathered  into 
her  spirit  the  essence  of  the  race  genius 
of  the  Latins.  Later  came  the  Teu 
tonic  baptism,  for  she  only  learned 
German  at  fourteen,  when  her  adored 
39 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

brother,  Sam  Ward,  came  home  from 
Heidelberg,  brimming  over  with  the 
songs,  the  poetry,  the  philosophy  of 
Germany.  She  studied  Schiller  and 
Goethe  with  ardor  — -  among  her  treas 
ures,  we  have  found  a  long  autograph 
letter  from  Goethe  to  her  tutor,  Dr. 
Cogswell.  In  her  youth  there  were 
still  cultivated  French  people  living 
in  New  York,  who  had  taken  refuge 
there  during  the  reign  of  terror.  She 
remembered  one  of  these  gentlemen 
in  exile  who  gave  her  French  lessons, 
another  who  came  to  the  house  when 
there  was  a  dinner  party  to  mix  the 
salad,  a  third  who  came  to  dress  her 
hair  for  a  ball.  Then  there  were  a 
group  of  Italian  political  exiles  who 
were  made  welcome  at  her  father's 
house,  and  the  Greek  boy  (a  fugitive 
40  J 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

from  the  unspeakable  Turk),  Christy 
Evangelides,  adopted  by  him,  who  till 
the  day  of  his  death  spoke  of  her  as  his 
sister  Julia.  All  these  early  influences 
tended  to  make  a  cosmopolitan  of  the 
little  lady  while  she  was  still  in  the  nur 
sery.  The  general  culture  of  the  "  little 
old  New  York  "  of  that  time  was  far 
broader  than  that  of  Boston;  the  nar 
row  swaddling  bands  of  Puritan  pro 
vincialism  never  bound  her  free  and 
vaulting  spirit.  From  world  citizen 
ship  to  universal  citizenship,  to  other 
world  citizenship  is  a  far  cry.  There 
are  men  and  women  with  a  truly  cos 
mopolitan  spirit  who  never  attain  that 
wider  universal  citizenship.  She  often 
quoted  Margaret  Fuller 's  "  I  accept 
the  universe."  Though  keenly  aware 
of  the  manner  in  which  Margaret  had 
41 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

laid  herself  open  to  ridicule  by  this 
high-sounding  phrase,  without  herself 
formulating  it  (her  sense  of  humor 
could  never  have  allowed  that),  she 
practically  did  "  accept  the  uni 
verse,"  was  always  conscious  of  a  sort 
of  universal  citizenship  that  made  the 
affairs  of  every  oppressed  people  her 
affairs.  No  hand,  however  dirty,  was 
ever  stretched  out  to  her  that  she  did 
not  take  it  in  her  own  and  in  taking  it 
recognize  the  God  in  the  man.  She  car 
ried  a  touchstone  in  her  bosom  by 
which  she  found  gold  in  natures  that  to 
others  seemed  trivial  and  base.  She 
had  few  intimate  friends,  none  in  the 
usual  sense  of  the  term,  for  with  all  her 
bonhommie  that  made  her  the  "  friend 
of  all  the  world,"  the  Universal  Friend 
was  her  only  real  intimate.  Her  re- 
42 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

serve  of  soul  was  impenetrable;  only 
her  poems,  and  occasionally  a  page  in 
her  diary,  give  us  any  insight  into  her 
spiritual  nature  —  glimpses  of  a  cer 
tain  high  companionship  with  the  stars 
and  the  planets. 

We  hear  much  of  the  dual  nature 
of  man.  The  term  misleads.  Man,  or 
at  least  woman  has  a  triple  nature,  is 
made  up  of  flesh,  mind  and  spirit.  How 
did  she  use  these  three  different  na 
tures  —  the  physical,  the  intellectual, 
the  spiritual? 

In  her  youth  the  views  of  health 
were  very  different  from  what  they  are 
now.  As  a  child,  she  lived  the  greater 
part  of  the  year  in  New  York,  where 
she  was  never  encouraged  to  take  much 
outdoor  air  or  exercise.  Every  after 
noon  at  three  o'clock  the  big  yellow 
43 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

and  blue  family  coach,  drawn  by  two 
fat  horses,  came  to  the  door  to  take 
the  children  out  for  a  drive <>  Even 
when  they  went  to  the  country  for  a 
change  of  air,  the  children's  complex 
ions  were  more  considered  than  their 
health.  Miss  Danforth,  an  old  friend 
of  the  family,  told  my  mother  in  later 
years  of  having  met  the  Wards  at  the 
seaside,  where  Julia,  who  had  a  deli 
cate  ivory  complexion,  wore  a  thick 
green  worsted  veil  when  she  went 
down  to  the  beach. 

"  Little  Julia  has  another  freckle 
today/'  the  visitor  was  told.  "  It 
was  not  her  fault,  the  nurse  forgot 
her  veil." 

She  was  from  the  first  a  natural 
student,  loving  her  books  better  than 
anything  else;  but  she  was  a  perfectly 
44 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

normal  child  too  and  her  good  spirits 
and  her  social  gifts  often  tempted  her 
from  her  work.  Her  sister  Louisa 
remembered  that  she  used  to  make 
her  maid  tie  her  into  her  chair,  so 
that  she  should  not  be  able  to  leave 
her  study  should  the  temptation  assail 
her.  In  spite  of  a  too  sedentary  youth, 
she  started  life  with  an  uncommonly 
good  body.  After  her  marriage  to 
my  father  she  received  many  new  and 
valuable  ideas  on  matters  hygienic, 
and  while  never  a  great  pedestrian 
she  always  walked  twice  a  day  till  the 
very  end  of  her  life.  Still  it  must  be 
confessed  that  her  muscles  were  the 
least  developed  part  of  her.  For  the 
last  twenty  years  she  was  rather  lame, 
the  result  of  a  fall,  when  her  knee  was 
badly  injured.  She  was  always  per- 
45 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

sistent  in  walking  as  much  as  she  was 
able  however,  in  spite  of  the  effort  it 
cost  her.  During  the  summer  and 
autumn,  she  passed  a  large  part  of 
the  day,  studying  and  reading,  on 
the  piazza  of  her  country  house  at  Oak 
Glen  in  Portsmouth,  Rhode  Island. 

Though  for  many  years  she  left  the 
housekeeping  to  the  daughter  or  grand 
daughter  who  was  living  with  her,  she 
always  kept  her  own  bank  account 
and  never  allowed  any  one  to  take 
charge  of  her  finances.  She  often 
lamented  that  her  hands  were  so  use 
less  for  household  tasks,  envying  her 
granddaughters'  dexterity  with  scissors 
and  needle.  I  must  not  forget  to  men 
tion  her  practising.  She  had  a  beauti 
ful  voice  which  had  been  carefully 
trained  in  the  old  Italian  method. 
46 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

She  practised  her  scales  regularly  all 
her  life;  I  have  often  heard  her  say 
she  believed  the  exercise  of  singing  was 
very  valuable  in  preparing  her  for 
public  speaking.  She  was  faithful  too 
in  practising  on  the  piano,  and  always 
played  her  scales  so  that  her  fingers 
never  lost  their  flexibility  or  the  power 
to  do  the  things  she  really  wanted 
them  to  do  —  to  hold  the  pen  (she 
almost  never  dictated,  but  wrote  every 
thing  with  her  own  hand),  to  play 
the  piano,  to  accompany  her  speaking 
with  appropriate  gestures.  To  the 
last  her  hands  retained  their  exquisite 
shape;  the  cast  made  from  them  after 
death  shows  their  unimpaired  beauty. 
My  father  was  very  strict  about 
diet;  all  "  fried  abominations"  were 
taboo  with  him,  pastry,  high  season- 
47 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

ing,  ham,  cocoanut  cakes  —  all  rich 
food  —  were  anathema  maranatha. 
From  first  to  last  she  was  frankly  a 
rebel  in  this  matter.  It  was  said,  in 
the  family,  that  she  had  the  digestion 
of  an  ostrich.  In  spite  of  all  opposi 
tion  she  calmly  continued  to  eat  what 
ever  she  fancied  to  the  end  of  her  life. 
During  her  last  summer  she  wrote 
to  her  physician  asking  permission 
to  eat  ham  and  pastry,  dishes  that 
to  her  daughters  seemed  a  little  heavy 
for  summer  weather.  At  her  last 
luncheon  party  she  was  advised  not 
to  eat  pate  de  foies  gras  or  to  drink 
champagne;  she  put  aside  the  advice 
with  the  familiar  remark  we  all  knew 
so  well: 

"  I  have  taken  these  things  all  my 
life  and  they  have  never  hurt  me." 
48 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

The  fact  of  the  matter  was,  she  had 
a  perfect  digestion  which  she  used 
carefully  and  never  abused.  She  ate 
moderately  and  slowly,  with  an  entire 
disregard  to  what  is  usually  considered 
good  for  old  people.  She  rose  at  seven; 
in  her  youth  and  middle  age  she  took 
a  cold  bath,  in  later  years  the  bath 
was  tepid  —  well  or  ill,  it  was  never 
omitted.  During  the  last  twenty 
years,  that  great  fourth  score  so  rich 
in  happiness  to  herself  and  her  family, 
arid  that  greater  family  of  hers, 
the  Public,  she  took  a  little  light  wine 
with  her  dinner,  "  for  her  stomach's 
sake,"  as  she  would  say,  quoting  St. 
Paul.  This,  with  a  cup  of  tea  for 
breakfast,  was  the  only  stimulant  she 
needed,  for  her  spirits  were  so  buoy 
ant,  her  temperament  so  overflowing 
49 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

with  the  joie  de  vivre,  that  we  called 
her  the  "  family  champagne/7  Break 
fast  with  us  was  a  social  meal;  there 
was  always  conversation  and  much 
laughter  for  she  came  down  in  the 
morning  with  her  spirits  at  their 
highest  level.  She  slept  about  eight 
hours.  Until  her  seventieth  year  I 
never  knew  her  to  lie  down  in  the 
daytime,  unless  she  was  suffering  with 
headache.  The  first  part  of  that 
seventieth  year  was  not  a  good  time 
for  her.  More  hearty  healthy  people 
are  killed  every  year  by  the  sentence: 
11  The  days  of  our  years  are  threescore 
years  and  ten,"  than  by  any  four 
diseases  you  like  to  name.  Even  her 
radiant  health,  her  buoyant  tempera 
ment  felt  its  depressing  influence;  as 
the  weeks  and  months  went  by  and 
50 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

she  found  herself  quite  as  vigorous  in 
her  seventieth  year  as  she  had  been  in 
her  sixty-ninth,  she  forgot  all  about  her 
age  and  resumed  her  activities,  retain 
ing  under  protest  the  daily  nap.  She 
lay  down  with  the  clock  on  the  bed 
beside  her;  twenty  minutes  was  quite 
time  enough  to  "  waste  in  napping!  " 
During  the  last  five  or  six  years,  always 
grudgingly,  she  gave  a  little  more  time 
to  resting,  taking  a  half-hour's  siesta 
before  luncheon,  another  before  dinner, 
"  to  rest  her  back."  She  always  sat 
in  a  straight  backed  chair,  never  in  her 
long  life  having  learned  how  to 
"  lounge  "  in  an  easy  chair.  She  was 
by  nature  a  night  owl  and  never 
wanted  to  go  to  bed  if  there  was 
any  other  night  owl  to  keep  her  com 
pany.  So  much  for  her  use  of  that 
51 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

faithful  servant,  the  body.  If  the  de 
velopment  of  her  muscles  was  not  quite 
up  to  the  modern  standard,  her  intel 
lectual  training  far  surpassed  it.  From 
first  to  last  she  kept  her  mind  in  the 
same  state  of  high  training  that  the 
athlete  keeps  his  body,  strove  for  that 
perfect  balance  of  power  in  all  the  dif 
ferent  functions  of  the  brain  that  an 
all-round  athlete  aims  for  in  his  phy 
sique.  I  never  remember  a  time  when 
she  relaxed  the  mental  gymnastics 
that  kept  her  mind  strong,  supple, 
active. 

Once,  at  a  crucial  moment,  when 
beset  by  perplexities,  I  asked  for 
advice,  her  answer,  stamped  on  my 
memory  as  long  as  it  shall  hold  to 
gether,  was  given  in  three  Latin 
words: 

52 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

"  Posce  fortem  animum."  Ask  for 
a  strong  mind!  The  motto  of  her 
English  friend,  Edward  Twistleton, 
known  and  loved  by  her  generation  of 
Bostonians. 

Ask  for  a  strong  mind;  ask  earnestly 
enough  and  you  will  get  it,  will  learn 
to  laugh  at  that  old-fashioned  bogey, 
the  fear  of  being  considered  "  strong- 
minded.  " 

Long  ago,  when  a  silly  acquaintance 
demanded  if  it  was  true  she  was  a 
strong-minded  woman,  she  parried 
with  the  counter  thrust: 

"  Is  it  not  better  to  be  strong- 
minded  than  to  be  weak-minded?  '' 

If  you  want  a  strong  mind  or  a  strong 

body  there  is  only  one  way  to  get  it, 

by  faithful  exercise.    There  is  no  royal 

road,  no  easy  short  cut  to  either  goal. 

53 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

The  wise  friend,  the  good  physician 
can  point  out  the  way,  you  yourself 
must  tread  it! 

She  always  read  her  letters  and  the 
newspapers  (history  in  the  making) 
immediately  after  breakfast.  Then 
came  the  morning  walk,  a  bout  of  calis 
thenics,  or  a  game  of  ball;  after  this  she 
settled  to  the  real  serious  business  of 
the  day;  ten  o'clock  saw  her  at  her 
desk.  She  began  the  morning  with 
study,  took  up  the  hardest  reading  she 
had  on  hand.  In  her  youth  she  read 
Goethe;  in  her  middle  life,  when  she 
was  deep  in  the  study  of  German  phi 
losophy,  Kant,  Fichte  or  Hegel.  For 
years  Kant  was  the  most  intimate 
companion  of  her  thought.  In  the 
early  sixties,  when  she  was  in  the  for 
ties,  her  diary  was  filled  with  Kant's 
54 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

philosophy.  Sometimes  she  differs 
with  his  conclusions,  sometimes  am 
plifies  them,  oftenest  endorses  them. 

"  One  chosen  lover,  one  chosen  phi 
losopher!"  was  her  motto.  While  she 
owed  much  to  Spinoza  and  records  in 
her  journal  that  Kant  does  not  do 
him  justice,  her  philosopher  par  excel 
lence  was  Immanuel  Kant.  On  her 
seventieth  birthday  the  Saturday 
Morning  Club  of  Boston  gave  her  a 
beautiful  jewel  with  seven  moonstones 
and  one  topaz.  At  a  dinner  soon  after 
she  wore  this  jewel  to  pin  a  lace  scarf. 
The  conversation  at  table  turned  on 
Kantian  philosophy  and  she  was  asked 
some  question  concerning  it. 

"  Do  you  think  I  wear  the  Categori 
cal  Imperative  on  my  left  shoulder?  " 
she  cried. 

55 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

"  Is  this  the  Categorical  Impera 
tive?  "  asked  Mrs.  Whitman,  pointing 
to  the  jewel  that  held  the  lace.  After 
that  the  club's  jewel  went  by  the  name 
of  one  of  the  toughest  nuts  in  Kant's 
philosophy. 

When  she  was  fifty  years  old  she 
learned  Greek;  from  the  time  she 
could  read  it  fluently,  the  Greek  phi 
losophers,  historians,  and  dramatists 
shared  with  the  Germans  those  pre 
cious  hours  of  morning  study.  In  the 
end  the  Hellenes  routed  the  Teutons, 
and  remained  her  most  cherished  in 
timates.  At  luncheon  she  would  tell 
us  what  she  had  been  studying,  an 
excellent  way  to  teach  children  his 
tory.  I  shall  never  forget  the  day  when 
she  had  read  in  Xenophon's  Anabasis 
the  account  of  the  retreat  of  the 
56 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

Greeks,  who  formed  part  of  the  expe 
dition  of  Cyrus.  She  came  dancing 
into  the  dining  room,  where  the  children 
were  waiting  for  their  soup,  waving  her 
beautiful  hands  and  crying: 

"  Thalatta!  Thalatta!  "  the  cry  of 
the  wearied  Greeks  on  first  catching 
sight  of  the  sea,  after  wandering  for 
years  in  the  interior  of  the  Persian 
empire. 

No  event  in  history  is  quite  so  real 
to  me  as  Hannibal's  crossing  the  Alps. 
Day  by  day  she  took  us  with  that 
valiant  Carthaginian  general  on  his 
long  journey  across  Hispania,  over  the 
Pyrenees,  through  Gaul,  along  the 
Rhone,  and  over  the  Graian  Alps. 
The  day  Hannibal  finally  got  his  ele 
phants  over  the  Little  Saint  Bernard 
Pass,  and  down  into  Italy,  was  one  of 
57 


JULIA       .WARD       HOWE 

positive  rejoicing  for  us  little  ones. 
Her  imagination  was  so  keen  that 
when  she  repeated  to  us  what  she  had 
been  studying,  it  always  seemed  as  if 
she  had  seen  these  things  with  her  own 
eyes,  not  merely  read  about  them. 
The  effort  of  studying  Greek  whetted 
her  mind  to  its  keenest  edge.  Aristotle 
and  Plato,  with  her  Greek  Testament, 
she  read  to  the  last.  She  talked  with 
us  less  about  the  philosophers  than 
the  dramatists  and  historians.  I  re 
member  how  much  we  heard  about  the 
Birds  of  Aristophanes,  one  of  her 
favorite  classics.  Reading  Greek  was, 
I  think,  the  greatest  pleasure  of  her 
later  life.  One  afternoon  last  summer, 
when  a  pretty  girl  of  a  studious  turn 
came  to  see  her,  I  chanced  to  hear  her 
parting  words,  said  with  a  fervor  and 
58 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

solemnity   that   impressed   the   young 
visitor : 

"  Study  Greek,  my  dear,  it's  better, 
than  a  diamond  necklace!  " 

After  the  morning  plunge  into  Greek 
or  German  philosophy  '  to  tone  up 
her  mind,"  she  took  up  whatever 
literary  task  she  was  at  work  upon, 
"  put  the  iron  on  the  anvil,"  as  her 
phrase  was,  "  and  hammered  "  at  it 
till  luncheon.  She  was  a  most  careful 
and  conscientious  writer,  writing,  re 
writing,  and  "  polishing  "  her  work 
with  inexhaustible  patience.  Occa 
sionally  she  got  a  poem  all  whole,  in 
one  piece,  like  The  Battle  Hymn. 
This  was  rare  though;  as  a  rule  she 
toiled  and  moiled  over  her  manuscripts. 
In  the  afternoon  she  was  at  her  desk 
again,  unless  there  was  some  outside 
59 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

engagement  —  answering  letters,  read 
ing  books  in  a  lighter  vein,  Italian 
poetry,  a  Spanish  play,  a  book  of 
travels  or,  best  of  all,  a  good  French 
novel. 

Each  day  opened  with  the  stern 
drill  of  the  Greek  or  German  phi 
losophy,  by  which  her  mind  was  exer 
cised  and  at  the  same  time  stored  with 
the  thoughts  of  the  wise,  the  labors  of 
the  good,  the  prayers  of  the  devout. 
That  was  the  first  process,  the  taking 
in,  receiving  the  wisdom  of  the  ages. 
Then  came  the  second  or  creative 
process,  when  she  gave  out  even  as  she 
had  received.  This  regular  mental 
exercise  was  like  a  series  of  gymnastics, 
by  widen  the  receptive  and  creative 
functions  of  the  brain  were  kept  in 
perfect  working  order.  If  you  are  to 
60 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

pour  out,  you  must  first  pour  in.  If 
your  lamp  is  to  serve  as  a  beacon  light, 
it  must  be  well  trimmed  and  filled  with 
oil  every  day. 

She  never  in  my  memory  took  up  any 
work  after  dark.  Unless  she  was 
called  abroad  by  some  festivity  or 
meeting,  the  evening  was  our  play 
time.  She  invariably  dressed  for  din 
ner,  which  was  followed  by  talk,  whist, 
music,  and  reading  aloud.  She  rarely 
used  the  precious  daylight  for  reading 
English  novels,  so  at  night  she  was 
ready  to  listen  to  some  "  rattling  good 
story  '  recommended  by  one  of  the 
grandchildren.  She  delighted  in 
Stevenson,  Crawford,  Cable,  Barrie, 
Stanley  Weyman,  Conan  Doyle,  Mere 
dith,  Tolstoi  and  Sienkiewicz.  How  she 
loved  the  friends  of  bookland,  the 
61 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

friends  who  never  hurt  or  bore!  The 
new  ones  were  welcome,  but  she  was 
faithful  to  the  old  and  liked  nothing 
better  than  to  reread  those  master 
pieces  of  her  youth,  the  novels  of 
Scott,  Dickens  and  Thackeray.  We 
read  Pickwick  every  year  or  two;  she 
never  wearied  of  the  greatest  English 
novelist's  greatest  masterpiece.  A  good 
ghost  story  made  her  flesh  creep;  she 
was  often  kept  awake  by  the  troubles 
of  the  "  people  in  the  book/7  who  were 
so  real  to  her  that,  when  they  were 
having  a  very  bad  time  of  it,  she  would 
spread  her  hands  before  her  face  and 
cry  out: 

"Stop!    Stop!    I  cannot  endure  it!" 

Money  troubles  of  hero  or  heroine 

especially  afflicted  her;  this  was  odd, 

for  she  bore  the  loss  of  the  greater  part 

62 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

of  her  own  fortune  with  courage  and 
equanimity.  Though  she  knew  the 
value  of  money,  and  practised  the  most 
touching  little  economies  so  that  she 
might  have  more  to  give  away,  she 
cared  very  little  about  money  and 
was  always  too  busy  with  more  im 
portant  matters  to  -think  much  of 
it.  The  stories  of  arctic  adventure, 
Jack  London's  especially,  "  gave  her 
the  shivers; "  she  ached  with  the  cold 
and  hunger  of  his  dogs  and  heroes. 
The  younger  people  among  the  lis 
teners  often  envied  her  enthusiasm. 
Her  imagination  was  so  keen,  her 
power  of  making  believe  the  story  was 
real  so  tantalizing,  infectious  too,  that 
it  carried  us  through  many  a  book  that 
would  have  been  dull  without  it. 

One  of  the  last  books  she  enjoyed 
63 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

was  Dr.  Morton  Prince's  Dissociation 
of  a  Personality.  She  was  deeply 
interested  in  this  last  word  on  psy 
chology  and  every  day  at  luncheon 
gave  us  an  account  of  Sally's  last  prank. 
In  her  later  years,  though  she  wrote 
much  poetry,  she  did  not  read  as  much 
English  verse  as  in  her  youth.  I  do 
not  know  at  what  period  she  studied 
Shakespeare,  but  she  was  so  familiar 
with  the  plays  that  at  the  theatre  I 
have  often  heard  her  murmur  a  cor 
rection  of  a  line  falsely  given  by  some 
player.  Her  memory  was  prodigious; 
it  was  like  a  vast  collection  of  pigeon 
holes,  where  there  was  a  place  for 
everything,  and  everything  was  in  its 
place.  She  seemed  to  have  a  sort  of 
mental  card-catalogue  of  all  the  knowl 
edge  that  was  stored  away  in  her 
64 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

capacious  brain.  It  was  as  if  the  sub 
jects  were  all  classified,  and  when  she 
wished  to  speak,  write  or  think  on  any 
given  one,  she  consulted  the  catalogue, 
then  went  straight  to  the  alcove  in  that 
well  stored  library  and  brought  forth 
volume  after  volume  dealing  with  the 
subject  under  consideration.  It  will 
hardly  be  believed  that  she  wrote  her 
volume  of  Reminiscences  entirely  from 
memory,  never  so  much  as  consulting 
her  own  diary.  It  has  been  said  of  her 
that  she  remembered  all  she  ever  knew, 
whereas  most  of  us  forget  a  large  part 
of  what  we  have  known.  She  certainly 
had  an  unusual  command  of  her  own 
knowledge.  On  one  of  my  long  absences 
in  Europe,  I  had  taken  with  me  by 
mistake  her  large  Worcester's  dic 
tionary,  thinking  it  was  mine.  On  my 
65 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

return  after  an  absence  of  more  than 
two  years,  I  exclaimed: 

"  How  dreadful  it  was  of  me  to  take 
your  dictionary  -  -  what  have  you  done 
-  did  you  buy  a  new  one?  " 

"  I  did  not  know  you  had  taken  it," 
she  said. 

"  But  —  how  did  you  get  along  with 
out  a  dictionary?  '' 

She  was  surprised  at  the  question. 

"  I  never  use  a  word  whose  meaning 
I  do  not  know." 

"  But  the  spelling?  " 

She  gave  a  funny  little  French  ges 
ture  of  the  shoulders,  inherited  with 
so  much  else  from  her  Huguenot  an 
cestors,  of  whom  she  knew  little  and 
thought  much.  It  meant,  I  suppose: 

"  When  you  have  learned  Latin, 
Greek,  French,  German,  Spanish  and 
66 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

Italian,  you  will  have  learned  how  to 
spell  English  --  perhaps!  rj 

At  sunset,  sitting  upon  her  piazza  at 
Oak  Glen,  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  flaming 
sky  beyond  her  pines,  if  she  chanced 
to  be  alone,  she  would  repeat  an  ode 
of  Horace.  She  was  learning  one,  line 
by  line,  when  the  summons  came. 
I  remember  her  saying  that  this  made 
the  thirtieth  ode  she  had  committed 
to  memory.  Nous  revenons  a  nos 
premiers  amours.  Horace,  the  delight 
of  her  youth,  consoled  what  might  have 
been  some  lonely  hours  in  her  last  days. 

So  much  for  the  regular  intellectual 
drill,  by  which  she  kept  her  mind  deli 
cately  keen,  as  the  soldier  keeps  his 
weapons  for  the  fight,  as  the  craftsman 
keeps  the  tools  for  his  work.  Admirable 
as  this  was,  it  was  only  the  secondary 
67 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

source  of  her  power.  What  was  it  fed 
the  inner  flame  of  her  life  so  that  it 
shone  through  her  face,  as  fire  shines 
through  an  alabaster  vase? 

She  tapped  the  great  life  current  that 
flows  round  the  world;  to  those  who 
know  the  trick,  'tis  the  simplest,  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world  to  do,  as 
easy  as  for  the  babe  to  draw  the  milk 
from  its  mother's  breast.  You  have 
merely  to  put  yourself  "  on  the  circuit," 
let  the  force  universal  flow  through 
you,  and  you  can  move  mountains  or 
bridge  oceans.  She  knew  the  trick; 
she  was  forever  trying  to  teach  it  to 
others,  to  women  in  especial,  to  work 
ing  women  above  all  others. 

Her  first  waking  act  was  prayer, 
aspiration;  her  last,  thanksgiving, 
praise!  Just  as  some  persons'  first 
68 


JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

action  is  to  open  the  window  and  fill  the 
lungs  with  fresh  air,  or  to  drink  a  glass 
of  cold  water,  hers  was  to  open  wide 
the  door  of  her  soul  and  let  the  breath 
of  the  Spirit  blow  through  it.  She  was 
a  mystic,  a  seer.  The  Battle  Hymn  was 
not  the  only  poem  "  given  "  her  in  the 
gray  dawn  of  day  when  the  birds  were 
singing  their  matins;  many  of  her  best 
poems,  her  best  thoughts  came  to  her 
during  the  first  moments  of  conscious 
ness,  when  the  Marthas  of  this  world 
are  wondering  what  they  shall  get  for 
breakfast,  or  what  clothes  they  shall 
put  on.  Poor  Martha,  dear  Martha! 
Try  for  the  uplift  and  the  grace - 
they  will  come  to  you,  even  if  yours 
is  not  the  art  to  make  a  poem  out  of 
them.  That  is  a  special  gift!  Live 
your  poem,  and  its  music  will  turn 
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JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

the  lives  of  those  with  whom  you  live 
from  prose  to  poetry,  change  life's 
water  into  wine. 

She  very  rarely  talked  with  her 
children  on  religious  matters.  Both 
she  and  my  father  had  a  dread  of 
giving  us  the  very  narrow  religious 
training  they  themselves  had  received. 
Conscious  of  the  mistakes  of  such  a 
bringing  up,  she  shunned  them  and, 
though  we  all  knew  how  devout  a  per 
son  she  was,  it  was  chiefly  through  her 
writings  and  her  poems  that  we  received 
a  sense  of  the  religious  side  of  her 
nature.  Her  faith  in  a  divine  Provi 
dence  was  the  deep  well-spring  in  which 
the  roots  of  her  being  were  fixed.  She 
lived  in  daily  communion  with  the 
divine  life.  Her  diary  is  full  of  dreams 
that  are  like  the  ecstatic  visions  of  the 
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JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

old  saints.  In  the  note  already  referred 
to  written  on  the  margin  of  a  poem  in 
her  posthumous  volume,  At  Sunset,  she 
says: 

"  The  thought  came  to  me  that  if 
God  only  looked  upon  me  I  should 
become  radiant  like  a  star." 

Beatrice,  her  favorite  of  Shake 
speare's  heroines,  says: 

"  There  was  a  star  danced  and  under  that  I 
was  born!  " 

In  October,  the  month  she  left  us,  a 
wonderful  star  appears  in  the  heavens, 
and  at  this  season  of  the  year  shines 
with  an  extraordinary  brilliancy.  She 
always  watched  for  it  and  often  pointed 
it  out  to  others. 

"  What  is  the  name  of  that  star?  " 
I  have  heard  her  ask  more  than  one 
man  of  science.  "  It  changes  color 
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JULIA       WARD       HOWE 

like  a  flash  light  in  a  light  house, 
flashes  from  white  to  green  and  then 
to  red."  At  last  she  asked  the  ques 
tion  of  a  man  who  could  answer  it  and 
learned  that  her  star's  name  was 
Aldebaran  and  that  is  one  of  the  stars 
of  the  constellation  of  Taurus.  Her 
horoscope  was  never  cast,  but  I  believe 
that  she  was  born  under  the  influence 
of  that  wonderful  star  that  flashes  first 
the  color  of  the  diamond,  then  the  ruby, 
and  last  the  emerald,  and  that  when  she 
was  born,  Aldebaran  danced! 

Though  she  so  rarely  spoke  of  such 
matters,  we  who  lived  with  her  were 
fed  at  second  hand  by  that  deep 
limpid  stream,  the  river  of  immortal 
life,  in  which  she  grew  rooted  deep. 
One  of  the  many  manifestations  of  this 
was  the  joyousness  with  which  she 
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JULIA       W 

took  up  each  day  and  its  little  cares. 
She  always  came  into  the  room  in  the 
morning  like  a  child  who  has  some  good 
news  to  share  with  the  family.  Those 
wonderful  spirits,  that  overflowed  in 
every  sort  of  wit,  jest  and  antic,  took 
the  sting  from  the  bitterest  nature;  in 
her  company  the  satirist  grew  kind, 
the  cynic  humane.  A  deep  spiritual 
joy  seemed  to  enwrap  her  like  a  sort 
of  enveloping  climate.  Where  she  was, 
the  sun  shone,  the  sky  was  blue,  birds 
sang,  brooks  babbled,  for  so  tremen 
dous  was  her  spiritual  force  that  it 
always  conquered.  It  sometimes 
seemed  to  me  as  if  I  was  conscious  of 
a  sort  of  war  of  temperaments  between 
her  and  some  pessimistic  or  cynical 
nature.  It  was  like  one  of  those  days 
when,  as  we  say,  "  the  sun  is  trying  to 
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ilA       WARD       HOWE 

come  out."  The  sun  of  her  presence 
never  failed  to  come  out,  to  banish  the 
gray  fog  of  the  blues,  the  sufferings 
of  the  irritable  or  the  disheartened. 
When  people  came  to  talk  to  her  of 
their  troubles,  as  they  often  did,  the 
troubles  seemed  to  shrink  like  the 
clouds  on  a  dark  day,  leaving  first  a 
little  peep  of  blue  visible,  and  finally 
the  whole  sky,  clear  and  fervid. 

One  word  more,  take  it  as  a  legacy, 
a  keepsake  from  her.  I  asked  her 
for  a  statement  of  the  ideal  aim  of  life. 
She  paused  a  moment,  then  summed  up 
the  mighty  matter  in  one  sentence, 
clear  and  cosmic  as  a  single  rain-drop, 
a  very  epitome  of  her  own  life : 

"To  Learn,  To  Teach,  To  Serve, 
And  To  Enjoy!  " 


